Diplomat pushed for deal on ozone
Mostafa Tolba, a U.N. official who was considered the father of the Montreal Protocol, the agreement intended to save the ozone layer that is widely known as part of the world’s most successful environmental treaty, died Monday in Geneva. Hewas 93.
Dr. Tolba had been the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program for 17 years. He was also praised for his leadership in guiding the Vienna Convention.
The Vienna meeting, held in 1985, created the basic international approach to protecting the ozone layer. The Montreal Protocol, signed in 1987, lays out specific actions.
The two agreements are often regarded as models of international diplomacy.
After playing a major part in the establishment of each agreement, Tolba was credited with pioneering the role of the international environmental diplomat. The meetings in Vienna and in Montreal were intended as a response to the growing alarm in the 1970s and 1980s over such atmospheric phenomena as the depletion of the ozone layer around the Earth and the expansion of holes in the parts of the layer over the polar regions.
At Vienna and Montreal, conferees recognized that financial, scientific and industrial organizations could help find solutions.
Many people played a part in the formulation and adoption of the treaties, but great credit was accorded to Tolba. Not only was he trained as a biologist, but he also was regarded as a charismatic figure, steeped in the diplomatic skills required for finding common ground among a diverse array of countries and governments.
He expressed the need for “appropriate action at all levels of society, from the smallest local communities to the whole community of nations.”
In recent years, some scientists have observed signs that ozone depletion has been halted. By some calculations, full restoration of atmospheric ozone might be achieved by the middle of the 21st century.
Mostafa Kamal Tolba was born Dec. 8, 1922, in Zifta, Egypt. He graduated from Cairo University in 1943 and received a doctorate five years later from Imperial College London. Afterward, he set up a school of microbiology at Cairo University.
He taught in the 1950s at the University of Baghdad and later was an Egyptian civil servant, including serving as undersecretary of state for higher education. He headed his country’s Olympic Committee in the early 1970s.
Tolba was the author of at least four books and 90 scientific papers, and he delivered many speeches and lectures on plant diseases and environmental matters.
Committed to the idea of “development without destruction,” he headed his country’s delegation to the 1972 Stockholm Conference, at which the United Nations sought to create a worldwide environmental policy. At that meeting, the U.N. Environment Program was launched, with headquarters in Nairobi.
By1973, Tolba was in Nairobi as deputy director of the program. He was named director in1975 and held the post until 1992.
In addition to his work on the ozone treaties, Tolba was credited with leadership at the Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes in 1989 and the 1992 U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity.
Information about survivors was not immediately available.